Automated vehicle washing facilities are fairly common. People utilizing automated vehicle washing facilities often desire to have a dressing fluid applied to the tires of their vehicle to provide the tires with a shiny appearance. The dressing fluid can be applied manually. In general, after the vehicle and tires have been cleaned, a worker at the automated vehicle washing facility manually applies the dressing fluid to the vehicle tires. In certain facilities, the worker will dip a sponge into a container of the dressing fluid, and then wipe the sponge over the sidewalls of the vehicle tires.
There have been attempts to automate the application of dressing fluid to vehicle tires. Exemplary approaches are described by U.S. Pat. No. 6,260,225 to Bowman and U.S. patent application Publication No. U.S. 2001/0037765 to Gorra.